One of the reasons for the proliferation of email as a means of communication has been the ability to attach documents. In general, any document in any format can be sent to nearly any part of the world. As email is increasingly utilized as a medium for collaboration and document exchange, the underlying cost associated with sending an email has proportionately increased as administration, bandwidth, and storage costs rise. A major cause of this cost is email attachments, which can make up more than 85% of all email data. It has been estimated that approximately 20% of all emails contain attachments, while as much as 92% of email resources are consumed by attachments.
Test results have demonstrated that as emails with attachments pass through email servers the average processing loads on the email servers are substantially higher for emails with attachments when compared to emails without attachments. As more emails with attachments are sent out, the server load levels may proportionately increase. In many cases, out of the total number of email attachments, many of documents are not original documents, but rather revisions or duplicates. Often, it can be challenging to collate numerous versions of an attachment together to form a final version. In addition, at any given time, none of the recipients are guaranteed to have the latest version of the attachment.
In a world of heightened security, email attachments can represent a point of vulnerability for many document security plans. Once shared, an attachment can become a type of public property where the recipients are able to do whatever they want with the attachment. In general, the sender of an attachment has little control over the access rights to the attachment, neither can the sender control what the recipients can do with the attachment.